Saturday, January 05, 2002

Zenpriest #5 - Addicted to Attention

At some point, previously purposeful behavior which gained a reward simply becomes habit. Take for example the phenomenon of obesity. Eating is purposeful behavior. Because we have to do it in order to survive, there are both physical and psychological rewards. Even in the case where there is no real physical need, the purely sensual and psychological rewards are still there, thus people continue to engage in that behavior even there is no physical need.

It appears to me that there is assumption embedded in your question that once "empty attention got old" that women would cease seeking it. But the realities and mechanics of human behavior in a host of other examples don't work that way. People continue to engage in all sorts of behaviors long after the reward which initially resulted from that behavior ceases to exist.

Probably the simplest example of this is addiction. At first, drugs like heroin and cocaine produce an intense rush of euphoria. But very quickly the body begins to habituate and requires increasing dosages to produce decreasing effects. Over time, the baseline physical/emotional condition changes so that instead of beginning from a state of "normal" and being moved to a state of euphoria, the lack of the drug produces withdrawal symptoms which are uncomfortable and fit perfectly within the operational definition of "pain". Thus, the drug becomes necessary to avoid that "pain."

I really should draw a diagram to illustrate this (I think much more visually than verbally) but let me try to describe it in graphical terms. Imagine an ordinary XY graph with the Y axis representing emotional state. And, let's simply define zero on the Y axis as the normal emotional state of most human beings most of the time - neither euphoric nor painful. (this point will become very significant in a moment).

Starting at zero, a person takes a euphoriant and is moved to a +5. When the drug wears off, the state returns to 0. They do it again, and the process of habituation starts. There is no way to objectively quantify or measure emotional states, so every person judges their own emotional status by comparison to their other emotional experiences. They don't measure their emotional state against an objective yardstick, but compare it to how they felt before. At the pre-conscious level, the mind is saying "Wow, a little while ago I felt GREAT, but I don't feel nearly so good now." Thus, even though an outside observer would say that they are back at zero, their subjective experience puts them at -.1. Each iteration of that cycle moves their perception of their state further below their previous baseline: -.2, -.3, -.4, and so on.

Eventually they reach the condition where the non-drug state instead of being zero on the scale has reached -5. A jolt of the drug still produces the same movement of +5 on the emotional scale, but due to their progressively depressing baseline the subjective result is that they now take the drug to reach the state of zero.

So, it might be more accurate to replace the term "attention whores" that is used here with "attention addicts." Women literally are attention addicts, because without it they cannot feel normal and feel a state of emotional deficit. Thus, like any addict as soon as they get their last fix they go start looking for their next one.

The differences between men and women are due to their different baselines. From the male baseline, the state that women live in looks like a +5, so we can't understand what the hell they are bitching about. From the female baseline, the state that males live in feels like a -5 and is painful as hell to them.

The creation of this difference in baselines begins at birth. There are numerous studies out there which show that baby girls get picked up and comforted when they are crying much more quickly than boy babies. The toughening of males begins the moment they leave the womb.

If you can for a moment imagine and crawl into the consciousness of a neonate, they are learning about the world and that learning shapes their developing nervous systems. It literally occurs at the level of developing neural connections and powerfully shapes the neural structures which develop.

The moment babies start to cry they are developing internal benchmarks for "crying work I have to do in order to get my needs met." Picking arbitrary numbers simply to illustrate the principle, let's say that the girl infant gets picked up and comforted after one minute of crying work while the boy infant has to cry for a full five minutes in order to get his needs attended to.

Thus, if a baby of each sex starts to cry at the same time, after one minute the girl will get her reward while the boy still has 4 more minutes of crying work to do until he gets his needs met.

You are sharp enough that I probably don't need to use a cluebat to point out the obvious parallels between this scenario and what happens in the adult workplace.

Now, let's look very closely at the infants at the one minute mark. The girl baby is thinking "HEY! I've done my my work, WHERE'S MY REWARD?!?!?" while the boy baby knows he is just getting warmed up and has 4 more minutes of crying work to do before he gets HIS needs met. At the 2 minute mark, the infantile female is starting to get seriously pissed, while the little boy is just hitting his stride. She has already had to do twice as much crying work to get her reward as she is used to having to do, while he has only done 40%. By the 3 minute mark, the infantile female is approaching a state of rage - "HEY! THERE'S A GODDAMNED 'GLASS CRYING CEILING' IN HERE SOMEWHERE!", while the boy baby now has his eyes on the prize and knows he is in the home stretch. At 4 minutes, the infantile female is beginning to lose hope - "$#$%, I'm never going to get what I want!" - and actually begins to give up and develop a sense of helplessness. Many of them simply quit before they reach the male benchmark, and thus never end up with the reward that a male who is used to that benchmark achieves.

Again, do I even need to point out the parallels between this and "wimmins's STILL only make 75 cents for every $1 a man makes"?

Males are conditioned from birth on wards to expect fewer rewards, and to expect to have to work harder for the ones they do get, than females. The lives of most males are so far outside of the female experience that most females cannot even imagine it.

Now, the reason's for biomech's observation that younger and older women get it, while women in between do not, is that neural development continues up until about age 21. There are reasons why this particular age shows up throughout history as the point at which people have been allowed to take on adult responsibilities and privileges.

Prior to that, neural structures - which literally determine the way we think - are still flexible and new information can lead to new perspectives. Once these are fixed, however, it takes years of failure of one's developed paradigm in order to force the person to acknowledge its failure.

When this whole eek-wallet-ee nonsense started, a lot of guys signed on because it sounded great to them that they would be able to share in the easier rewards that women were accustomed to. But, we were young and $#%@ and naive and totally underestimated the impact of both biology and thousands of years of social tradition. Life is inherently a challenge because it is through surviving and overcoming challenges that living things remain strong, resilient, and viable. Culture is simply not prepared to make the reward system for males any easier.

It was also a mistake for boomer males to assume that women would ever be held to the same standards as males. We just assumed that it was obvious to everyone how much work was required to gain the rewards we got, and expected women to work as hard as we did if they wanted those same level of rewards.

Culture is at a fork in the road. Having completely destroyed the old merit/earning/reward connection for males, it either has to face the fact that males are going to quit doing the $#$% work which keeps the culture going - like initiating relationships - or force women to take on their share of that $#$%-work.

Individual males who are not in positions of power can do nothing to affect what happens at the policy level, but we can go on strike against the $#$%-work and force women to do it if they want it done, because we now refuse to do it without any reward for doing it.

What's Wrong With The World -- G.K. Chesterton (excerpts)

Sex and Character -- by Otto Weininger

The Encyclopedia Marxofeminist

Feminist "Equality" Includes The Loss of Free Speech

If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave. To attempt to silence a man is to pay him homage, for it is an acknowledgement that his arguments are both impossible to answer and impossible to ignore. -- JBR Yant

"We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism." -- Nikita Krushchev

THE ANIMAL FARM REALITY OF "FEMINIST EQUALITY:"

"Differences [between men and women], including the products of social inequality, MAKE UNEQUAL TREATMENT NOT UNEQUAL AT ALL." -- Catharine MacKinnon, "Reflections on Sex Equality Under Law," Yale Law Journal, 1991

The Demographic Trap

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." -- Josef Stalin

Back to the Bible

"The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them." -- V.I. Lenin

No Thanks - We'd Rather Be Canadian!

"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one" ~Benjamin Franklin

Man-Made Global Warming is a Hoax being used to bring about Global Communism (Globalization)

"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains." -- Herbert Hoover

Just Doing My Part to Fight Global Warming!

"The threat of environmental crisis will be the 'international disaster key' that will unlock the New World Order." -- Mikhail Gorbachev, quoted in "A Special Report: The Wildlands Project Unleashes Its War On Mankind", by Marilyn Brannan, Associate Editor, Monetary & Economic Review, 1996, p. 5

Rule by Science

Philosophy Corner

“Dialectical thought is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion.” -- Leon Trotsky

Dialectical Thought is a Cornerstone of Marxism, and Feminism (Because They Are One In the Same)

The Marxist Dialectic's Zig-Zag

Wishing to advance in a room full of people, I do not walk through the aisle and straight toward my goal. Nor do I move slowly through the crowd shaking hands with friends and acquaintences, discussing points of interest, gradually nearing the objective. The dialectical pathway is different. It consists of a resolute forward advance followed by an abrubt turn and retreat. Having retreated a distance there is another turn and advance. Through a series of forwardbackward steps the goal is approached. To advance thus is to advance dialectically. The Communist goal is fixed and changeless, but their direction of advance reverses itself from time to time. They approach their goal by going directly away from it a considerable portion of the time. Lenin wrote the textbook, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Chinese Communist schoolchildren are taught to do the dialectical march taking three steps forward and two steps back. If we judge where the Communists are going by the direction in which they are moving we will obviously be deceived -- Dr. Fred Schwarz, President of Christian Anti-Communism Crusade

The Pussy Pass

All's Fair In Love and War

The Matriarchy Lives! (Click Picture)

"I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights', with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to 'unsex' themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings, and would surely perish without male protection." -- Queen Victoria, 1870